The other end of the aisle

A how-to guide

Photographer and friend, Kristina Childs, posed this question on Facebook today, and I wanted to answer it in a blog post: What are you supposed to do at the end of the ceremony?

So, here’s 20 things you can do at the end of the aisle after your ceremony, according to the Gospel of Josh.

  1. Run, run like the wind!
  2. Start shaking hands and kissing babies
  3. Make out with your newly married human
  4. Just leave the ceremony and go and spend 15 minutes somewhere quiet and personal with your favourite person that you just married
  5. Depart the ceremony to go and get those wedding photos and your guests can ruin your makeup with hugs and kisses later in the day
  6. Stand there awkwardly
  7. Stand there not-so-awkwardly but weirdly
  8. Stand there and thank everyone and don’t forget to call everyone mate if you forget their name
  9. Kiss and hug your bridal party and wait for everyone to come and congratulate you
  10. Get first in line for the bar tab, those lines can be brutal
  11. Clap a few times so the staff know you want some canapés
  12. Clap a few times then work your way into a We Will Rock You karaoke session.
  13. Walk out to the Dire Straits song, Walk of Life, so you can have that epic wedding ceremony walk out you’ve always wanted [reference and another]
  14. You could not leave the “altar” (for lack of a better description of the area you’re married in) and everyone could come to you.
  15. Instead of parading yourself all the way down the aisle, you could leave your celebrant and go to your family and starting kissing babies and hugging voters, umm, I mean family.
  16. If you’re in a chapel you can walk outside the chapel then as everyone leaves you can jump out from behind a bush and scare them … or you can stand there civilly and greet/thank them.
  17. It’s always a good opportunity to call shotgun in the classical cars waiting for the bridal party, no-one wants to sit in the back.
  18. Before the ceremony prepare collection buckets and ask for donations as everyone leaves.
  19. Stand at the end of the aisle with your hands in the air demanding high fives off everyone. Make sure grandma does not pass without slapping that hand.
  20. Or for that new post-modern ceremony spin we could never end the ceremony, negating the need to ever leave. We’ll set up home in the ceremony area and as your celebrant I become your new butler. Family will come and go but the three of us will never leave each other.